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Tuesday, December 1, 2015

At the Paris conference, expect an agreement that is sufficiently vague and noncommittal for all countries to claim victory.

In February President Obama said, a little carelessly, that climate change is a greater threat than terrorism. Next week he will be in Paris, a city terrorized yet again by mass murderers, for a summit with other world leaders on climate change, not terrorism. What precisely makes these world leaders so convinced that climate change is a more urgent and massive threat than the incessant rampages of Islamist violence?
It cannot be what is happening to world temperatures, because they have gone up only very slowly, less than half as fast as the scientific consensus predicted in 1990 when the global-warming scare began in earnest. Even with this year’s El Niño-boosted warmth threatening to break records, the world is barely half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was about 35 years ago. Also, it is increasingly clear that the planet was significantly warmer than today several times during the past 10,000 years.

Nor can it be the consequences of this recent slight temperature increase that worries world leaders. On a global scale, as scientists keep confirming, there has been no increase in frequency or intensity of storms, floods or droughts, while deaths attributed to such natural disasters have never been fewer, thanks to modern technology and infrastructure. Arctic sea ice has recently melted more in summer than it used to in the 1980s, but Antarctic sea ice has increased, and Antarctica is gaining land-based ice, according to a new study by NASA scientists published in the Journal of Glaciology. Sea level continues its centuries-long slow rise—about a foot a century—with no sign of recent acceleration.

Perhaps it is the predictions that worry the world leaders. Here, we are often told by journalists that the science is “settled” and there is no debate. But scientists disagree: They say there is great uncertainty, and they reflected this uncertainty in their fifth and latest assessment for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It projects that temperatures are likely to be anything from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer by the latter part of the century—that is, anything from mildly beneficial to significantly harmful.

As for the impact of that future warming, a new study by a leading climate economist, Richard Tol of the University of Sussex, concludes that warming may well bring gains, because carbon dioxide causes crops and wild ecosystems to grow greener and more drought-resistant. In the long run, the negatives may outweigh these benefits, says Mr. Tol, but “the impact of climate change does not significantly deviate from zero until 3.5°C warming.”

The next 10-15 years will show whether the global-warming slowdown continues or whether a strong warming trend terminates the current pause for good. The Paris summit is likely to agree to a review process that reassesses global temperatures and carbon-dioxide emissions every five years. If the climate is less sensitive to carbon-dioxide emissions than climate models assume, the new accord should allow for the possibility of carbon-dioxide pledges to be relaxed in line with empirical observations and better scientific understanding.

Concerned about the loss of industrial competitiveness, the Obama administration is demanding an international transparency-and-review mechanism that can verify whether voluntary pledges are met by all countries. Developing countries, however, oppose any outside body reviewing their energy and industrial activities and carbon-dioxide emissions on the grounds that such efforts would violate their sovereignty.

2 comments:

Brian
said...

PARIS. A CLIMATE SUMMIT ....A CO2 SMOKE SCREEN?Like most people today I have a theory, but to be honest absolutely no evidence to back it up (So it is a relative to what the paid up bun fight is all about in Paris)I just wonder whether all this hype and rigmarole about Climate Change and its failed ancestor Global warming, are but a method devious as it may seem, to further the ambitions and power of the U.N.? After all there have been calls and doubts about this organisation long before it became the present huge bureaucratic self perpetuating monster, but now there is enough agitation to endanger those Mandarins that inhabit its white Manhattan colossus.Conceived in the aftermath of World War 11, its founders never really gave a thought to this organisation becoming a bureaucratic state within itself. Fortunately its members still have enough sense to deny it total independent military power. This plus the Veto of the Security Council; despite its obvious limitations the veto still remains a hand brake on its members since debacle over Korea. It remains imperative that all the Security Council member countries attend all meetings. World Government it seems is nearly always supported by ex Politicians, some of whom probably never get over being a local Caesar. They have never read the Bard’s Julius Caesar, and heeded the warning of the Ides of March.What is serious to us all is the continual increase in the power of the U.N. and its reliance upon it member countries to resolve everything in its favour. The individual has been reduced to a serfdom level, and individual responsibly systematically downgraded.To argue even with the benefit of logic against the Climate Change fanatics, is, I have found out, a waste of time and effort. Climate Change and human responsibility for the ills of climatic variations has become embedded into the Public mind by an indoctrination that would do credit to Dr Goebbels and the Nazi Party of the 1930’s. They have learnt their lesson well, accept that time itself will prove their final embarrassment; but not till a huge amount of money and effort has been expended, and by then today’s Politicians and Media will have long since departed from the scene.Brian

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